Soitec gets ready for fully depleted SOI at 22nm

Soitec has said it is ready to start making 300mm wafers with ultra-thin silicon-on-insulator layers to support fully depleted transistors, which could go into production on 22nm processes.

The wafer manufacturer claimed it can make top silicon layers as thin as 20nm to a thickness uniformity tolerance of ±0.5nm in high volume.

FD SOI has been used commercially for many years, but mainly for niche applications. However, it could replace bulk silicon in mass-market chips as manufacturers try to overcome problems with variability with existing, strongly doped bulk-silicon transistor channels.